Project Status?

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, 2004-12-21 at 22:25 +0000, Stuart Ellis wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 17:29:59 -0800 (PST), "Rahul Sundaram"
> <rahulsundaram at yahoo.co.in> said:
> >
> > > This is really a policy decision - whether or not
> > > draft documents should
> > > be advertised for review outside this list.  The
> > > process summary implies
> > > that this should be done through the project
> > > infrastructure (mailing
> > > list, Bugzilla etc.).
> > 
> > 
> > I dont consider it a policy decision. It shouldnt be.
> > You are going to get more feedback from people outside
> > this list at one point or the other. It is also
> > important that you listen to those feedback from end
> > users and revise your document to suit them better.
> > The question is whether you publish the doc now and
> > wait for feedback or actively push this doc to the
> > user list *now*. the earlier you do it its better in
> > IMHO
> 
> Sorry if that was a little curt - not enough sleep.  The point that I
> was trying to make was that there is a process for releasing documents,
> which has been decided by the editors.  There has to be, because
> releasing something as a Fedora document means that it is the official
> item.  So I can't put this out for review as a draft FDP Installation
> Guide unless it is decided that it can go out outside of the normal
> route.

I think there was a bit of a hole in the process, left unintentionally
vacant for this long.  Sorry that wasn't cleaned up to make this part of
the process more official.

The process should include room for beta documentation to be tested.

There is an entity in common/fedora-entities.xml  <!ENTITY DRAFTNOTICE
SYSTEM "./draftnotice-en.xml">, and the contents of draftnotice-en.xml
are:

<note>
  <title>DRAFT</title>
  <para>
    This is a draft version of the document. It is subject to change at
any time    and may not have been tested for technical accuracy yet. If
you find any
    errors, please report them via Bugzilla in bug &BUG-NUM;.
  </para>
</note>

Put that at the very top of the very first <section> or <chapter> (i.e.,
intro.xml).  Make sure there is a &BUG-NUM; for people to file against.
You can now post this on your own website and distribute the URL, with
big, loud exclamations that it is a testing/draft document, so if it
breaks, the user gets to keep the pieces, etc.

Stuart -- thanks so much for your hard work on this.  Sorry I've been
absent of late, I'm nose down in finishing documentation for RHEL 4.  I
definitely think you should reveal this document as a beta when you are
ready to.  A post on fedora-list should get you plenty of testers. :)

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, Sr. Tech Writer
a lemon is just a melon in disguise
http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
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